


how blue, how beautiful

by lymricks



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, this is post s3!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 02:04:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21091586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: Billy had been there, on the ground when the government people showed up, and then they’d looked back for him and he was gone.And that’s what brings Steve out here. That’s what’s kept him out here, away from Hawkins, driving all around the country looking for the rightrealskyline, because maybe Billy had just gotten up and walked away, that night.





	how blue, how beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missroserose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missroserose/gifts).

Steve learns over a series of beautiful, cold mornings that he loves the desert. He hadn’t thought that he would, of course, because he’s from empty fields and corn stalks, but the second his tires hit the roads of the desert, he thinks that he might stay here forever, that he might never leave. Of course, this isn’t the first place he’s thought that about in the three years since he’s left Hawkins. Steve has spent nearly eleven hundred days looking for a place where he belongs.

He’d liked Arizona the most, the way the desert looks when it rains, all those plants and flowers greedy for the water they’ve been waiting for, had long since learned how to bloom and be _alive_ with whatever they got. He remembers the sounds of that desert.

He hadn’t stayed there, though. Steve’s greedy for something, but it’s not water, or the sound of thunder, or any kind of biblical cleansing rain.

Nancy accuses him of haunting the west coast when he talks to her over the phone. 

He’s propped up in a phone booth on the edge of a sketchy stretch of highway somewhere in Nevada, or maybe California. It’s late, here, so early in New York, where Nancy lives now. Everyone is leaving Hawkins, or has left it - Steve included. He’s not sure why everyone else leaving makes him so angry, but it burns high in his chest, makes his fingers twitch when he thinks too hard about it.

“Stop haunting, Steve,” Nancy says, and she sounds tired. She should be. If Steve does the math right, it’s nearly four in the morning, there. She answers, though. She always does. “Just go home, Steve.” She’s ending sentences with his name, which reminds him of teachers in high school, back when he was the kind of cool that made it funny to be a dick to your teachers.

Billy had never, not _once_, been a dick to a teacher, and Steve had a _lot_ of classes with him, and Billy was also generally a _huge dick_, but. Not to teachers. That’s what Steve’s thinking about as he stares out at the road through the glass of the phone booth, looking at his car, tired, and there’s no one out here but him.

Go home, Nancy says. Stop haunting the deserts. She doesn’t say much more, but he can hear the rest: Stop driving in circles. Stop wasting all your money on gas. Stop _searching_.

He can’t, though. There’s so much square footage of the wide, western shores for him to dig up, so many small towns to look through. “He’s out here, Nance,” Steve tells her.

“Oh, Steve,” she says, using his name again, and even though he knows that she’s tired, she stays on the phone with him for a long time, until he runs out of quarters, and then he gets back in the car.

He wishes, after, that he’d saved some. He likes to call Nancy because her voice is soft and she sounds like she cares, but he might have liked to call Robin, too, who jokes that she and Nancy should start talking, it would make parenting him easier, and who doesn’t let Steve wallow.’

It’s why, he knows, he hasn’t called her in months. Robin draws him out of his head. Steve can admit, in quiet, private moments, that someone probably _should_ draw him out of his head, but once he’s out, he thinks that he might have to admit what everyone else already knows: Billy is gone. He isn’t coming back.

If he had stayed in Hawkins, if no one had died, Steve thinks he would have made a good cop. He’s great at laying out a narrative: here’s the facts. In his missing person’s case, the one he just can’t drop, the facts are these:

Three nights before Billy Hargrove went on a car ride to a motel that ruined his life, he and Steve Harrington had stood--improbably, sure, but it had happened--shoulder to shoulder at the top of the quarry and stared out over Hawkins together.

“I’ve seen skylines better than this bullshit,” Billy had told him, “I’ve seen real _cities_, Harrington.”

And Steve, who had been to a real city exactly twice, once for a wedding with his parents and once on a school-sponsored trip, had said, “You’ll have to show me sometime,” and held his breath.

Billy had turned to look at him, and the corner of his mouth turned up, and Steve had thought _finally_, we’re going to _talk about this thing_, but they hadn’t talked. Steve had been staring at the non-existent skyline, thinking about what it would look like if it were a real city, and Billy had stepped directly in front of him.

“Hey!” Steve had protested, because he was trying to look at the sky, but Billy had shaken his head at him.

He’d cupped Steve’s jaw in one palm, and Steve remembers that Billy’s fingers had been rough, and that neither of them had the excuse of being high or drunk to account for the way Billy kissed him, the way that it lit fire up Steve’s spine, or the way that Steve wrapped both arms around Billy and kissed him back.

It had felt like the start of something, but it turned out to be the ending, because over the next three days, Billy had gotten in a fight--this, Steve learns from Max--with his dad about the future, about being gay, and he’d had something to prove that day at the Hawkins Pool, and he’d tried to prove it with Karen Wheeler and--

Well, even for the best self-appointed fake cop on the side of the road in the middle of some godforsaken stretch of highway out west, it’s hard to stick to the facts when he remembers Billy dying.

Or not dying, not really, because he’d been there, on the ground when the government people showed up, and then they’d looked back for him and he was gone.

And that’s what brings Steve out here. That’s what’s kept him out here, away from Hawkins, driving all around the country looking for the right real skyline, because maybe Billy just gotten up and walked away that night.

Robin would tell him to stop being an idiot. She’d say it just like that, too, but with an edge of caring that dulled the sharp edges of _idiot_ enough that he’d listen. She’d tell him, as so many fucking people have tried to, that it was probably Russians or one of Owens’s guys, gone rogue. She’d tell him what everyone wants him to believe: Billy Hargrove did not get up and walk away from that night. The simplest answer is probably true: someone took his body.

But if Steve admits that, he has to admit that he needs to go home and start living his life again. He has to admit that he needs to stop blowing the cash his parents gave him--keep giving him--when they had been grateful that he left, because they didn’t know what else to do with his long, midnight walks, or how fast he’d lost weight, or how he’d sleep most of the day. He’d have to go back like everyone else and get a job and live a normal life and admit, once and for all, finally, that his story with Billy will always be unfinished.

He doesn’t want to admit that, though, and no one can _fucking_ make him, so he gets back in the car, three years older and no wiser, and drives and drives and drives.

He ends up, as he often does, back in California like a homing pigeon. It doesn’t matter how many times he drives the coast, its beauty when the sun comes up still startles him. It’s way better than the quarry, where he and Billy had sat on the hood of the BMW-- “We’re not scratching _my_ baby up,” Billy had protested, which is funny because not even a week later Steve had rammed into the Camaro with Billy in it, and he’s never said sorry--and watched the sun rise over Hawkins.

Billy’s head had been on Steve’s shoulder and he’d dozed off, but Steve had shaken him awake to watch and they’d kissed a little more, and everyone and their mother, at this point, has told Steve he needs to move on, but he watched Billy die, and then he looked for his body and it had gotten up and walked away, so he doesn’t fucking _move on_.

He drives the coast of California until the traffic gets too much to handle, and then he drives to Los Angeles, where he always thinks he’s going to find Billy, but he never does.

There’s a bar he likes, though. Steve thinks its location is funny, a halfway point between a church that preaches death to the homosexuals and good view of the Hollywood sign. He’s old enough to drink, now, and doesn’t need a fake ID when he orders a beer and then a second and then a third and then goes outside to smoke because the bar feels too stuffy, all of the sudden, too full of people who weren’t there last time.

Everything around Steve keeps changing, but he’s stuck. He knows he’s stuck. He just doesn’t know what it looks like when he stops looking for Billy.

Steve smokes and leans against the brick of the bar and stares up at a sky too light polluted to have stars, and he jumps out of his skin when someone leans against the wall next to him.

“What the fuck are you doing in California, Harrington?” Billy Hargrove asks him.

And because Steve has had this dream a hundred thousand times, he says, “Looking for you.”

This is the first time Billy’s laughed at him for it, though. Usually, at this point in the dream, they kiss, and it doesn’t matter where they are, whether it’s the middle of Starcourt Mall or some barren desert or some too loud and too sticky bar, they _always_ kiss, but Billy laughs at him now. “That’s pretty fucking sad, man,” he says.

Steve doesn’t remember going to sleep. He’s dreamt this so many times and it never deviates like this. “You’re still an asshole,” he says, and because it’s a dream, he’s going to _walk away_ and keep looking for Billy in the morning and--

There’s nothing that feels dreamlike about the way Billy grabs his arm when Steve turns to leave. He yanks him back and Steve stumbles, drops his cigarette. It grazes his forearm as it falls and his skin hurts where it did, burned, probably. Cigarettes _are_ dangerous, apparently, and Nancy’s _always_ said that, and--

“Harrington, are you _okay_?” Billy is saying, and he’s snapping his fingers in Steve’s face in a way that is loud and disruptive and so fucking Billy Hargrove.

“What would you do if I started to cry right now?” Steve asks. He doesn’t think he actually will, but he _could_, so.

“My dad always told me only pussies cry,” Billy says, and Steve winces, but then, “But it was because I was always crying. I don’t fucking care, man. What are you doing in California?”

Steve wants Billy to ask him if he’s okay again, because he isn’t, because he’s not sure this is real, because he’s realizing in this moment that maybe he _believed_ everyone who said Billy was dead and never _actually_ expected to find him, alive and well, at Steve’s favorite shitty bar in Los Angeles.

“I told you,” Steve says. “I’m looking for you.”

Billy just stares at him. 

Steve looks away and runs a hand through his hair. “You just disappeared,” he says. “You were--I mean, you were _definitely_ dead? And then you were just--gone?”

Billy keeps staring. Steve’s starting to wonder if he dreamt everything. Is he saying anything out loud? 

“Can I get a cigarette?” someone says, who is not either of them, and they both jump practically out of their skin before Steve’s nodding.

“Yeah, here, take--just--_here_\--” and he’s shoving the whole pack at the guy, still staring at Billy, who is still staring at him. “_What_, Billy? What is your _fucking_ problem?” Steve snaps, because he never dreamed it like this. There was always more kissing, some kind of emotional embrace. Billy usually said _thank you_ said _I’ve been waiting_.

This Billy, who must be real, because only Billy could be this big a dick about it, says, “I mean, three years? Man, we kissed like, _twice_. That’s pretty fucking _sad_, Steve.”

And Steve is ready to turn and walk away, to go back to Hawkins and try and get his life together, he’s turning around again, he is, except--

Except Billy called him Steve.

“Let me buy you a beer?” Steve says, which is not what he should say to someone telling him he’s _sad_, but he is, he knows, so he doesn’t think he can fault Billy for knowing the facts. Steve has appointed himself a fake cop, after all. He likes facts.

“No,” Billy says, and Steve’s heart plummets way deep down to his feet, “Come back to my place. Don’t waste your money here.”

And then Billy turns and walks away and it takes Steve a second to realize that Billy’s both alive and inviting him back to his _place_? And when Steve gets there, it’s pretty much--well, it’s like, it’s _clear_ that Billy’s been living there for a while. There are knick knacks. There is a _bed frame_. Steve always pictures Billy with a mattress on the floor.

There’s a photograph of Max. Steve bristles. “You talk to her?” he asks, because Steve has been driving _all over the country_ _looking for him_ and Max could have _said something_\--

“No,” Billy says, and it’s curt and hard, and underneath, it’s hurting, “I got it from the house before I left town that night.”

And then there’s a lot of talking, but that isn’t the interesting part. Steve has shifted from fake cop to television drama, and so he catalogues the facts: how Billy woke up terrified, how he thought they were going to kill him, how when he realized he could still run, that his body was healing, he just did, how he left Hawkins, stole a bunch of money, came West and has been living in LA ever since, hiding, existing, trying to recover.

Steve takes that all in, but he can’t _believe_ that Billy is _trying to recover_ while Steve--who didn’t go through what Billy did--coped with his trauma by refusing to step out of it for even one single second of the last three years.

That isn’t the interesting part. Except, Steve thinks, for the part where Billy works with _horses_ on a _ranch_ outside the _city_. “It’s therapeutic,” he explains, a little defensive, when Steve, a little high off what they’re smoking together, cracks up.

He doesn’t think he’s laughed like that in three goddamn years.

No, the interesting part comes later, when Steve pushes Billy down onto his back on the carpet, and they kiss for a while, slow and sweet, fingers in each other’s hair. The interesting part comes when Steve pushes Billy’s t-shirt up and off, and traces over scars that he watched Billy get, and never thought he would walk away from. The interesting part comes when Steve drags his tongue and teeth over Billy’s pulse, just to feel it beating, to hear Billy’s breath hitch, his body _alivealivealive_ beneath Steve as he sinks into him, both of them gasping for air, both of them clutching at each other.

When they’re done, exhausted, sticky with sweat, Steve lies on top of Billy for a long time, feeling Billy’s heart beat under his ear, feeling Billy’s scars, ridged and knotted, against his skin. Billy has one arm around him, he’s got a joint in the other hand, and they both smoke slowly, lazily, just breathing.

“I can’t believe you were in California,” Steve grumbles, finally. “In fucking _LA_. Do you know how many times I looked out here? Do you know how many--I fucked _wished_ for you, and you were here the whole time?”

Billy shrugs. He lifts one shoulder. It jostles Steve, so he pinches him. “I mean,” Billy says, “It’s a big city, man.”

Steve groans, and then they get up, get dressed--they don’t shower, but Steve doesn’t mind, much, he likes the way they smell like both of them together--and Billy drags him out and up, onto the roof they definitely shouldn’t be on, and they stand there as the sun starts to creep up. They stare at the skyline together, Billy tucked against Steve’s side, alive and in the same place, and this--standing together, watching the sun come up over the skyline--feels like a coda, like they’ve been here before only this time, Steve thinks, they’re going to find out how it ends.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm late on this one and have been struggling with writing, and am grateful to everyone still waiting on these from me for your endless patience. I loved writing this one, and it feels great to get it completed, so thanks @missroserose on tumblr (& here!) for the wonderful prompt - I hoped that you enjoyed it.
> 
> <3 you all. I'm @lymricks on tumblr, too, where I'm trying to get my groove back.
> 
> The lyrics for this prompt were:
> 
> Between a crucifix and the Hollywood sign, we decided to get hurt  
Now there’s a few things we have to burn  
Set our hearts ablaze, and every city was a gift  
And every skyline was like a kiss upon the lips  
And I was making you a wish  
And every skyline  
How big, how blue, how beautiful


End file.
